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  If it is agreeable, I shall send you a retainer’s fee to this end. Please write to me at the palace with your estimated expenses and judicial costs. I will send you whatever funds you need.

  Mithros bless,

  June 30, 447

  Kourrem Hariq to the Whisper Man

  From the village of Deepwater, the north border of Fief Dewain

  For the last ten days I have been watching a family of unicorns. They number a sire, dam, filly, and colt.

  Laugh if you must. What else do you call long-maned, long-tailed horses with coats that shimmer, pearl-like hooves, and a long, twisting horn in the center of their foreheads?

  These are solid in color. The sire is fire chestnut, the dam black. Both young ones are a light brown that blends with the land and foliage here. The horns are real. The unicorns are real. I have tested both, gently, with my spells. I got knowledge of their reality and a wicked headache thereby.

  They aren’t the sweet, affectionate unicorns of the pale-skinned people’s tales and ballads, either. A lout of a trapper stumbled across the filly and colt yesterday. The parents kicked him to death, then trampled him to paste. I stay well back and downwind as I follow them.

  Yesterday a hollow circle of magic opened ahead of them. They walked into it. It closed, and they were gone.

  Have you knowledge of anything like this? We mages need to know if you do!

  Kourrem, drinking a calming tea

  August 30, 447 H.E.

  To George, Baron of Pirate’s Swoop

  From Coram, Baron of Trebond

  George, do you know what my little Jonthair said to me this morning? “Da,” he says, “there’s people with metal wings instead of arms, and claws instead of legs, sitting on the observing tower. And they don’t have clothes, not even the ladies.” It’s usually Alinna that’s the tale spinner.

  I said, “How did they get up there?”

  “From a big fire in the air,” Jonthair says, like all guests come that way. “Da, they’re going to get cold.” Behind him I see Alinna and Thomsen run by with half the linen closet in their arms.

  I follow my children to our observation tower and there they are. Seven great things, flapping off into a burning hole in the sky. They had steel feathers and claws, from what I could see and confirm later, human heads and chests, long hair with ribbons in it. When one cheeky nasty monster turns to grin at us, I see sharp steel teeth! And my children are jumping and waving and calling these things to come back!

  One left a feather behind. I’m sending this rubbing to you. That’s how I know their feathers are steel, and how you’ll know I haven’t been broaching the mead more than I should.

  What are they, George? Why has there been no word of them? What do all my taxes pay for if monsters with daggers for teeth can land atop my castle and charm my little ones into giving away my shirts? Not to mention leave a stink behind them that took three rounds of scrubbing to get out of the stones!

  I know my tales, Master Whisper Man. Anything even a little like those creatures went into the Realms of the Gods ages ago. Will you be telling me why we saw one here?

  Coram

  Baron of Trebond

  To Lord Harailt of Aili

  Head of the Tortallan University and Dean of Magical Studies

  With copies to the Heads of Academic and Healing Studies

  From Nealan of Queenscove

  4th day of February, 452

  Sir,

  I am writing to formally declare my intent to withdraw from my studies at the University. As you know, both of my older brothers were killed in the strange immortal attacks that took place over the winter, and I find myself quite suddenly the Queenscove heir. It is an honor I never expected, and comes with responsibilities I had not previously considered. Queenscoves have always served the throne as knights—twelve, all told—and with Graeme and Cathal on the rolls I felt free to pursue magecraft. But now it falls to me to uphold tradition, and do my duty to my house, by earning a knight’s shield. My father allows it is my right to make this choice, and I await only your response before petitioning the Crown. I hope you will understand and approve this course of action; please know that in ordinary times, nothing could drag or drive me away from this place of learning.

  I remain respectfully yours,

  Nealan of Queenscove

  Daine’s Immortals Notes

  Basilisk—Friendly, curious folk. Academics who don’t much like fighting. Built like lizards—they get up over seven feet when on their hind legs, easily. They have pebbled skin, like beading, not scales. All I’ve seen have been gray or bluish. Slit pupils. They have a belly pouch where they carry their young or store things. They’re no threat to humans who leave them alone. They eat rocks, all sorts, with precious stones being considered delicacies like human sweets.

  Related to dragons and wyverns. They’re good for translation and as ambassadors, being as they speak all mortal and divine languages from when they’re young. They speak mind to mind, too. Those newly from the Divine Realms talk mind to mind until they know how to speak aloud. They feel great magics being worked and walk through even the most powerful magical barriers. Human magic does very little to them. They turn creatures to stone with a whistled spell that never fails, ever, though Numair can break free of it given the chance. They also call light to stones and can find particular types of rock, which makes them popular mine workers.

  Centaur—Human upper half, horse lower half. All sorts of colors. There’s two kinds of centaurs—the peaceful sort and the blood-hungry. Peaceful centaurs have hooves and hands. The bloodthirsty have fangs, talons in place of hooves, and fingers tipped with claws.

  Youth lasts two centuries, but they never age past adulthood. Centaurs have a spoken language that horses understand. Centaur women attack and abandon stallions who don’t give them gifts. It makes them either good trading partners or bad bandits.

  They call horses slaves. Herdmasters view humans as worth only a bit more than horses. Raoul’s former squire, the Lady Knight Keladry? He said a herdmaster offered three horses for her in trade because she was a fine strong female who’d birth plenty more centaurs. Human women are able to birth a centaur child, but it most often kills them, if carrying the child doesn’t do it first.

  Herdmasters cull troublemaking members of their herd. They kill the horses that bred with the troublemakers, to make sure they’ve stamped out the bad blood. The centaur goddesses of vengeance are the Mares with Bloody Teeth. They take blood sacrifices and the leavings of the culled. Most centaurs are open to treaties with humans if the treaties are fair.

  Centaurs fight with both handheld weapons and their horse parts, using their horse parts like a trained warhorse, though their tricks are more sophisticated. There’s a vulnerable spot where the horse and human parts meet. The Lady Knight Keladry says a strike in that spot seems akin to kicking a man between his legs.

  They use the longbow as a distance weapon and their arrows are ofttimes fletched with the feathers of other immortals. They scorn crossbows. They have a dog’s sense of smell—though the tricks folks use to duck scent hounds work on them, too.

  Centaurs hide their passage and their presence with magic, same as other immortals do. When they hide, they don’t show in scrying crystals or other magical means. Human mages can use a hair from a centaur’s tail to force the centaur’s obedience, but centaurs have mages of their own, and they don’t take well to being forced into service.

  Dragon—Arrogant as anything. They’re the scholars of the Divine Realms. They have long, delicate-looking bodies, scaled like a reptile’s, with bat wings that are lit up by their bones. Their claws, teeth, and bones are all a soft silver color. They have slit-pupiled eyes like a cat’s. They come in all colors, from black and white to bright red. They have crests, almost like a lizard’s. The crests aren’t sensitive. More like scale or bone. The edges of their scales are razor-sharp and can’t be penetrated by any ordinary weaponry. It takes something
like an immortal’s claws to cut through.

  Dragonets aren’t much bigger than a large cat, though their teeth are as sharp as an adult’s. Newborns are soft. Their scales haven’t had time to harden, which makes them vulnerable to attack. In their infancy, which lasts about three years, they get to be around two feet long with an extra foot or so of tail. The young dragons in the Divine Realms, two and three hundred years old respectively, were about six to eight feet long from nose to tail tip. By mid-adolescence (which they reach after ten centuries), they get to be around fifteen to twenty feet long. Seemingly they grow about two feet every one hundred years. Adults get to be hundreds of feet long.

  They’re extremely good with magic and aren’t much affected by human spells. Even at a young age they understand human speech and the mind-speech of other immortals. They don’t gain the ability to mind-speak themselves until they’re about ten years old, but they’re born knowing the spoken dragon language. Even the youngest dragons are very intelligent and curious. Kitten followed what was going on in the negotiations with Ozorne, and she was barely more than an infant then.

  Their home in the Divine Realms is called the Dragonlands. It’s bordered on one side by Stormwing Eyries and on the other by the Sea of Sand. The border is marked by fire. They agreed long ago to ban visiting the Mortal Realm, even though the barriers that seal the Divine Realms couldn’t stop dragons. They’ve been cut off from mortals for so long that most of them don’t really know what’s going on in the Mortal Realm, though they’d tell you otherwise.

  They have a gathering called the Dragonmeet. They get everyone together to argue over lawmaking and other things. It’s ruled over by the oldest of the dragons. That was Rainbow when we were there. They debate until a human could die of old age, and they mightn’t agree on anything even then. They’re academics and politicians in one scaly bundle, and they don’t like change. Some—the younger ones, or those that keep a closer eye on things outside the Dragonlands—are more amicable about bending the rules. The Dragonmeet is what put a ban on visiting the Mortal Realm. Dragons live in clans, though they refer to each other as relatives no matter how distant the relation.

  They’re “mages of the air,” born with a natural talent for magic. Even infant dragons unlock doors or pop out locks with vocalizations, though Kitten is more advanced than her cousins. Dragons put out flames with a sound, call light to stones or their scales, and do all sorts of small spells with whistles. They use their magic for practically anything. They cast fire from their forepaws. Adults summon fire with a snarl. Invisibility spells are useless against them, and they see other spells. They’re able to put a spell of silence on someone, binding a victim’s mouth shut. Human spells just wash off adult dragons like nothing. Their magic lets them see things that mortals don’t sense at all, even the presence of gods and god-born children. Nothing hides from a dragon. An adult dragon, it’s said, is powerful enough to do battle with a god.

  Dragons change color to suit their mood or to show when they’re feeling a strong emotion. They turn pink when they’re scared and red when they’re angry. When they’re really angry, they scorch the ground under their paws without meaning to. Lightning flickers over their hides, getting thicker the madder they are.

  They travel within a realm by vanishing from one location and appearing almost at once where they want to go. They can send others away using the same skill. They go where they like, and unlike all other immortals, they’re able to carry others with them when they travel between realms. Even the gods can’t refuse a dragon passage. The spell to travel between realms is called a spiral spell and involves flying up into the clouds and then back down in a corkscrew flight pattern. Young dragons can’t do it—even at three centuries, their wings aren’t able to carry them. Once they can fly, though, they maneuver like swifts and are incredibly fast.

  No mortal or immortal senses the magic of a dragon being worked. Their invisibility spells are better than any human spell, masking the sight, sound, and smell of them. The only telltale sign of an invisible dragon is a bit of bending in the light when they move. Dragons can’t hide from each other, and if you’re close enough to touch a dragon, you see as the dragon does.

  They’re no threat to humans, not as things stand. We’d learn far more from them than maybe any other immortal. If we could get them to teach us.

  Griffin—Large, feathered cats, with the head, beak, and wings of an eagle. Males are only a little bigger than females, most griffins being around five to seven feet tall at the shoulder. You tell their sex the same way you do a cat’s. Their claws are as long as my forearm. They’re intelligent. They speak in ideas and feelings instead of words. Human voices grate on them and they don’t trust us, so they usually nest in places we can’t reach. They warn us off their nests if we live close by. Most have coloring that’s either raptor colors or bright, metallic shades. Sometimes you’ll see griffins with both. Most often their eyes are a similar color to their feathers. Griffin voices run through cat and raptor noises—squawks, screeches, chirps, hisses, growls, and yowls. That said, you won’t mistake them for a bird or a cat.

  They’re not a threat to humans, so long as humans leave them alone. When angered or threatened, griffins hunch up their shoulders, spread their wings, and lower their heads like some birds of prey do when protecting a kill. Infant griffins beg for food like baby birds, fluttering their wings and opening their beaks for a meal.

  Most griffins live a short flight from the coast or from big lakes. A lot of them nest in the Copper Isles. They eat dolphins, seals, sea lions, and the like, but mostly fish. They don’t like grass-eaters. Sheep and pigs and such. They have to clean themselves, preening and licking, to keep their feathers healthy. Young griffins usually learn to fly short distances within their first year. Babies sense their parents nearby the same way adults sense their young.

  Folks who trade in live young are asking for death. If a griffin smells its offspring on a person, even years later, they’ll kill that person, no question. The scent doesn’t go away. Numair calls it a kind of magical residue, since it lasts so long. Only those who’ve handled a live griffin or any part of griffin bodies carry the scent in this way. Feathers or claws, things that griffins shed, those are harmless except for the risk of gathering them. Griffins won’t tolerate being caged. They’re able to rust metal into nothing. Ozorne had a griffin caged in that awful menagerie, but he had to keep it magicked and the cage was magic, too.

  There’s no telling a lie around a griffin. Griffin leather used to be popular for shields, because whatever makes it impossible to lie to a living griffin carries over to the hide. Griffin feathers are worth their weight in gold. Arrows fletched with them are mage-killers and never miss, flying true even through illusions. Coverings for the eyes and ears made out of griffin feathers dispel illusion magics. Numair learned about that from Lady Kel. Griffins know that humans value their feathers, and they distrust humans in part because of the way we use them for their truth-telling properties. Stealing their young, killing them for their hides, all of that. Numair said there used to be spells to trap baby griffins in “undeath.” Folk would catch them, wait for them to fledge, and then use magic to sink them partway into shields. Not living. Not dead. No way to bring them back. The only people who die by a griffin’s paws usually deserve it.

  Hurrok—They’re cousins to flying horses, with a name that started as “horse-hawk.” Their wings are like bat wings, though. Not feathered, but webbed, with silver bones like long fingers and a claw at the tip of the “thumb” bone. They’ve predator’s fangs, forward-set eyes, and talons instead of hooves. They have the same coloring as regular horses.

  They’re intelligent and capable of mind-speech with wildmages, horses, centaurs, and other winged creatures. They live like horse herds. Several small, related groups make up a single herd, each herd being led by a mare. Most males are driven out when they mature. They often fly together until they find mares of their own and establish
a new herd. Their verbal communication is more like raptors than horses. They shriek, scream, and shrill. They’re flesh-eaters and hunt like raptors, diving for prey talons-first. They’re not invulnerable. They’re naturally violent and wrathful. Slavery only makes that worse. It’s best to avoid engaging with them.

  Merfolk—You can tell at a glance that they aren’t human. They’re fully scaled from the hips down, with flesh blending to scales around the navel. Even in their skin you see scale patterns. There are as many colors of merfolk as there are fish in the sea and their scales are like fish scales, too. Their teeth are sharp and as tough as immortal claws. Little ones tend to be about the same size and weight as a human four-year-old. Bull males get to be over seven feet in length, and females are usually five and a half or six feet long. Some travel on the backs of tamed porpoises, tuna, grouper, or dolphins. Their warriors ride sharks.

  They wear skirts and loincloths to cover their genitals. The women wear wrap scarves, and all merfolk like to wear decorative vests or armlets, sleeveless clothes, and armbands. They like pretty things, almost as much as crows, which is the only reason they started talking to humans. They only deal with folk they trust, most of those being sailors or people from seaside towns. If you betray them or let them down just once, they won’t trust you again. It’s best to avoid ever going to sea if you’ve betrayed one of the merfolk. They don’t forget.

  They’ve their own mages, doctors, merchants, and scholars. For a price, they’ll help bring up shipwrecks, trade in deep-sea fish and treasures, and work to guide fleets and navies safe across the ocean. Most sailors have a healthy respect for them, as merfolk sense the presence of whales, heavy storms, and the kraken. For the right price, they’ll work with fleets or serve as couriers.